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“Tell you what, just let me look at it.”
And he does.
To be honest, though, I’m not sure what I’m looking at. So I ring Tiff.
She answers. Which is a relief in some ways because I need her and a problem in others because she’s not really meant to be answering her phone at work.
“What do you need, boss?” she asks. Over her shoulder I see ayoung lad in a green jumper waiting with a frankly inappropriate level of patience.
“Are you with a customer?”
“It’s fine, I told him it was a Christmas emergency.”
It strikes me that I shouldn’t be encouraging Tiff to walk away from customers. Then again, it also strikes me that Tiff has been in work and available every time I’ve called, rather than taking repeated unscheduled personal days, so I count it as a net win. “Put him on.”
She holds the phone out and I see the customer more clearly. To give all due credit to Tiff’s judgement, he looks like the kind of feller who’d acceptChristmas emergencyas an excuse. His green jumper has reindeers all over it, and he’s wearing these NHS glasses that give him a sort of wide-eyed hopeful look. “Sorry,” I tell him, “I know this is really unprofessional.”
“It’s fine,” he says, and he looks like it really is. “I’m not in a hurry.”
“Are you sure? Because whatever you’re after I reckon we could sort it out.”
“No, no.” He’s giving me this little nod. “You’ve got me interested now. What’s going on?”
“Long story.”
“Still not in a hurry.”
I don’t really want to be telling everything to this stranger, so I give him the potted version. “I’m in London trying to organise our Christmas do, and it’s wound up going over a hundred and fifty quid a head—”
“Ooh, you don’t want to do that,” says the customer. “It’ll get taxed as a benefit in kind.”
“How do you know that?” I ask him.
“I’m a tax accountant.”
“And you don’t just want us to tell you where the loo brushes are real quick like?”
He shakes his head.
“Anyway, I’m trying to save money, and that means swapping the expensive, swanky venue we had for”—I sweep the phone’s camera around the narrow halls with their peeling paint and exposed steel—“this.”
Tiff elbows the customer out the way—I really probably should talk to her about workplace conduct—and peers at the screen. She sucks in a little breath as I walk deeper into the warren of side rooms and show her row after row of dilapidated cellars with bare shelves and ruined, disused fireplaces.
“Wow,” she says at last.
“I know,” I reply. “It’s fucking awful.”
“It’s fuckingamazing.”
I swing my phone around again. The room we’re currently standing in has an actual girder running vertically through the middle. “Are we looking at the same room?”
“It’s perfect.”
“It’s atip.”
The customer slides back into the picture. “I’m with”—he checks Tiff’s name badge—“Tiffany. It’s cool. It’s kind of urban chic.”
“Isn’t that just a fancy way of saying a tip?”
